Number living unsheltered in Winnipeg spiked during pandemic: report

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 23/07/2021 (1860 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Jay Craig lost the roof over his head for the fourth time when the COVID-19 pandemic began.

The 31-year-old now lives in a small camp on the banks of the Assiniboine River in Osborne Village, almost directly across from the Manitoba Legislative Building.

He tries to make cash here and there flying a sign (panhandling), but that doesn’t amount to much.

“It’s getting better now that the vaccinations are all out,” Craig said of the money made on street corners and traffic medians.

He used to do clothing alterations and design, Craig said while standing under the shade of the Osborne Bridge, where a slight breeze cooled the small encampment he was visiting Friday afternoon.

“It’s been rough,” he said of living on the street during the pandemic.

More people are now living on Winnipeg’s streets than before the COVID-19 pandemic, says a new report released this week for service agency Resource Assistance for Youth’s outreach team.

The agency studied the impacts of the pandemic on the marginalized people it serves in Winnipeg’s inner city, while some services provided by organizations like it and others were cut back out of public health concerns and people already living precariously or below the poverty line faced an increased risk of homelessness.

“The outreach was still there but drop-in was pretty much limited to a bag lunch, and it’s not exactly adequate — (not) enough to get by on,” Craig said of services offered. “A lot of people have been losing everything.”

The report found drastically more people living outdoors compared to those using homeless shelters, couch surfing or living in long-term housing prior to the pandemic.

In 2019-20, the street outreach team found 893 of their contacts were staying in emergency shelters. In 2020-21, that number dropped to 464. In the same time period, the number of people living unsheltered jumped to 4,774 from 4,145.

(Craig said he isn’t one for shelters, adding most services are concentrated on the Main Street strip, an area full of problems and hassles.)

The report also found a significant increase in the number of Indigenous people seeking services — to 1,154 in 2020-21 from 557 in 2019-20.

The outreach team discovered a shift in the kind of illicit drugs used among the city’s street population because of supply-chain disruptions, from the stimulant methamphetamine that’s long been the drug of choice to illicit opioids (depressants).

That poses a risk to street drug users — meth overdoses can lead to erratic behaviour, psychosis and long-term health problems. But overdosing on opioids, such as heroin, can be deadly.

Overdose deaths increased in Winnipeg from 2019 and 2020 by 87 per cent, to 372 deaths total — 354 of which were from opioids, the report shows.

As for Craig, he had been staying in a sober living facility in the city’s West End, but a dispute with an ex-romantic partner in the early months of 2020 forced them out, losing thousands of dollars in equipment he’d been using for his clothing business in the process.

In November, he contracted COVID-19 and stayed in isolation in a shelter set up specifically for the homeless population.

Since then, he’s been on the street full-time, losing his provincial Employment and Income Assistance. Now, he’s in need of basic necessities such as shelter, food and water — and help in the long term.

erik.pindera@freepress.mb.ca